No hype, just the reality behind the appearances relating to small-everything in and around Albany, New York by a native of the place. Some of it pure opinion but all of it written in the spirit of Truth, good facts-based journalism and freedom of expression!

Category Archives: Compassion

We’ve been sharing some posts on the funeral business and deathcare from several other sites. While this is not the focus of this blog, we don’t mind because the posts have attracted substantial interest. This post will be the last deathcare post we will be re-publishing on this blog. If you want to continue reading about deathcare in the US, please go to the following sites and follow them. Glad you are enjoying the posts so much but we have to get back to local political and social issues.

You can visit the following blogs for posts on death, dying, funeral services, and other death-related topics:

Republished with Permission from Thanatology Café.

There is a great deal to be said about our healthcare and deathcare industries in the US, they are similar in many respects and exhibit similar functional flaws in a general sense. In the humanectomized materialist consumerism driven culture in which we live, the corporations have reduced most of us to human means to a corporate end. Most of US humanity has been dehumanized to the level of mere consumers. This is not a new development, however, and can be read in many quasi-prophetic sources.

In a recent conversation with a licensed funeral director and funeral home operator, who read our article on Nicholas Facciand Newcomer Funerals and Cremations (March 26, 2017), we discussed among other things the funeral chains’ exploitation of the demise of our traditions. We continue that discussion here together with some and some interesting anecdotes about the Albany County Coroner’s office.

After that discussion, I couldn’t help but think about one of the many hysterical scenes in the Monty Python film, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” or of the grim portrayal by Dr John B. Huber of the Manchurian Plague (20th c.) and the Black Plague (14th c.).

Monty Python’s “Holy Grail”

The scene takes place during the Black Plague in medieval somewhere, and opens with the sounds of strange medieval music. Discordant and sparse images. Wailings and groanings. Close up of contorted face upside down. A leg falls across it. Creaking noise. The bodies lurch away from and scene pans out to reveal they are amongst a huge pile of bodies on a swaying cart that is lumbering away from the viewer. It is pulled by a couple of ragged, dirty emaciated wretches, the cart drivers. Behind the cart walks another large man, a slightly more prosperous Porter, wearing a black hood and looking rather sinister. The Porter is carrying an emaciated old man over his shoulder who is still moving, and protests “I’m not dead!” The dialogue goes something like this:

The scene: (The Porter carrying an old man slung over his shoulder, approaches the cart and the cart driver…)

Cart Driver:

Bring out your dead!

Porter:

Here’s one!

Cart Driver:

Ninepence.

Old man:

I’m not dead!

Card Driver:

What?

Porter:

Nothing…Here’s your ninepence.

Cart Driver:

Er…He says he’s not dead!

Porter:

Yes he is.

Old Man:

I’m not.

Cart Driver:

He isn’t.

Porter:

Well he will be soon. He’s very ill.

Old Man:

I’m getting better!

Porter:

No you’re not. You’ll be stone-dead in a moment.

Cart Driver:

I can’t take him like that; it’s against regulations!

Old Man:

I don’t want to go on the cart!

Porter:

Oh don’t be such a baby.

Cart Driver:

I can’t take him like that!

Old Man:

I feel fine!

Porter:

Oh, do us a favor…

Cart Driver:

I can’t.

Porter:

Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won’t be long…

Cart Driver:

I promised I’d be at the Robinson’s. They’ve lost nine today.

Porter:

Well, when’s your next round?

Cart Driver:

Thursday.

Old Man:

I think I’ll go for a walk.

Porter:

(To the Old Man) You’re not fooling anyone, you know! (to the Cart Driver) Look. Isn’t there something you can do?

Old Man:

(Singing) I feel happy, I feel happy!

The Cart Driver looks at the Porter for a moment. Then they both do a quick furtive look up and down the street. The Cart Driver very swiftly brings up a club and hits the Old Man on the head. (Out of shot but the singing stops after a loud bonk noise.)

Porter:

Ah! Thanks very much! (Handing over the ninepence) See you on Thursday!

While transcribing the dialogue I thought to myself how prophetic this 1975 spoof was. More than 40 years later we can watch this clip and it sends cold shivers down your spine. Back then what was morbidly hilarious has become stark reality for us today.

“Bring out your dead!” Newcomer Funerals and Cremations TV Ads.

Cryptkeeper Newcomer Ad

There you are, sitting enjoying a snack thinking “Life is good!” And Warren “Ren” Newcomer, the cadaver-like founder of the Newcomer Funeral Services Group based in Wichita, Kansas, appears on your television screen. He’s the 21st century version of the Cryptkeeper and plays the part really well. He looks like an embalming gone awry and oozes a false compassion and insincere expression that makes you want to choke on your chips. Here’s a guy who has made millions exploiting the deaths of loved ones and doing his part to destroy our death traditions while grinning like a corpse on the way to the bank. Newcomer Funeral Services Grouphas two locations in the Albany, New York, area, and has a presence in some 10 states. There are other similar funeral chains, Walmart-type factory funeral companies that have bought up private funeral businesses, cemeteries and crematoriums across the country. They operate under names like Service Corporation International (SCI), Dignity Memorial™, StoneMor Partners, Precoa, and of course, Newcomer Funerals and Corpse Disposal. What their advertising and marketing messages say to us, despite the actors and the phony compassion, is what Monty Python is teaching: “Bring out your dead!” Toss them on the cart and we’ll see you on Thursday (and don’t forget your checkbook or credit card).

“I’m Not Dead!” The Office of the Albany County Coroner declares a woman dead but she revives in the morgue

In New York Times article “They Said She Was D.O.A., But Then the Body Bag Moved” (Robert D. McFadden, 11/18/94) The author reports that Albany County Coroner Philip Furie and Paramedics allegedly “found no heartbeat, no pulse, no breath or other signs of life, and the coroner declared her officially dead.” So they “ zipped Mildred C. Clarke, into a body bag, took her to the morgue at the Albany Medical Center Hospital and left her in a room where corpses are kept at 40 degrees, pending autopsies or funerals. About 90 minutes later, the chief morgue attendant went in to transfer her to a funeral home. “ The attendant noticed some movement in the body bag, unzipped it and found that Mildred was still breathing. She was moved to intensive care and treated but the case has never been explained. The L.A. Times reports later that “Mildred Clark, the 86-year-old woman who spent 90 minutes in a morgue cooler last week after mistakenly being declared dead, died Wednesday of undisclosed ailments, a hospital spokesman said…. Albany Medical Center Hospital spokesman Richard Puff said Clark’s family had requested that the cause of death be withheld.” Any guesses as to the cause of death?

According to the article, “Albany is the only major city in New York State that does not have a medical examiner, an official who is trained in forensic pathology, and this would be a real advantage,” The office of the coroner is a relic still found in many American cities. Albany elects four coroners to declare deaths and investigate their causes. They have no medical training but are required to attend a “death investigation course.” The coroners are expected to evaluate crime scenes and suspicious deaths, but they have no medical training.

We’re investigating some leads relating to the performance of the Albany County Coroners, and will report on our findings in a future article. We suspect that the Albany County Coroner isn’t very popular among local funeral directors. But Hey! this is Smalbany, isn’t it? There’s a job for every misfit in the Albany Democratic Machine, isn’t there?

“Look. Isn’t there something you can do? Ah! Thanks very much! See you on Thursday.” Inconvenience of the Dying Process.

We’re so very busy and so much in a rush. Why? Because our handlers tell us we are. We’ve lost our sense for distinguishing what is nice and what is necessary. We no longer have to think. Advertisers tell us what we need. Marketers tell us what to ask for. Government tells us how to live. Churches tell us how to die. Emails tell us we need to Hurry! and to Rush! because time is running out to buy a certain something. Hell! We don’t even die in peace. Hospitals transform us into cyborgs with tubes and electrodes at every available spot, and when all else fails, they still want to provide “billable services.” Only when you have had enough watching the technology fail do you scream STOP! Even when the so-called healthcare team has the good sense to admit that they can’t do anything more, they recommend shipping what’s left of mom or dad to hospice. And so at hospice the saga continues. When death finally occurs, whether it’s helped along or drags out to the end, we are still in a hurry, still have other things to do. But yet again, the materialist consumerism we are addicted to has the solution for immediate relief of any inconvenience, even death. There are customized death packages for every budget ranging from direct burial or direct cremation to the “traditional funeral.” Just ask for the Detailed Price List required by the FTC’s Funeral Rule and prepare to be nickel-and-dimed. You have abandoned the traditional funeral home with the family funeral director and have opted for the Walmart funeral chain, the factory funeral service provider. And you deserve everything you get. Sorry but it’s true.

We’ve all read about states like Oregon and Washington that have legislated physician-assisted suicide (PAS), euthanasia in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. We all know about the hospice movement that has degenerated into another instance of corporate exploitation of death and the demise of the family. So it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Monty Python prophesied the hastening of death movement. True, we no longer use a club to help the dying along; we’ve become much more refined in the 21st century. We now use chemicals and drugs. Or, if we’ve made mom or dad into an ICU cyborg, we simply remove the respirator, inject some morphine and “Ah! Thanks very much. See you on Thursday” at the viewing. We’ve come a long way into our degeneration!

Get the shocking truth about Service Corporation International (SCI) here.

We really have to chuckle when we read such crapola like “Service Corporation International is dedicated to compassionately supporting families at difficult times, celebrating the significance of lives that have been lived, and preserving memories that transcend generations, with dignity and honor. (SCI site at , last accessed on April 6, 2017). If you’re ready to believe that operations like SCI or Newcomer, corporations with their eyes on the bottom line, with their programmed funeral directors and staff operating on a corporate agenda, are there to do what the family funeral home once did, you’re already brain dead. SCI is constantly being sued, settling, or paying out huge judgments resulting from their mistakes. But when you’re making billions, who cares. The living keep dying; sky’s the limit! Get on the cart.

A bit of history: In 1962, Robert L. Waltrip, a licensed funeral director who grew up in his family’s funeral business, founded Service Corpration International. SCI started out as a small network of funeral homes and cemeteries in the Houston, Texas, area.

SCI gradually increased its offshore presence, and it continued to acquire business interests in North America. Since the late 1990s the US and Canadian marketplaces a saturated battleground of competing companies intent on buying up and exploiting the deathcare business sector. SCI, In the course of the melee, Alderwoods Group and Stewart Enterprises emerged as the three principal companies in the resulting funeral corporation industry. As of December 31, 1999, SCI owned and operated 3,823 funeral service locations, 525 cemeteries, 198 crematoria and two insurance operations located in 20 countries on five continents. In 1999, SCI introduced Dignity Memorial, the first transcontinental brand offering deathcare goods and services in North America. By consolidating its network of funeral homes and cemeteries under a single brand, SCI expected that they could create a recognizable and marketable brand image. In 2000, poor market conditions forced SCI to reevaluate operations. While foreign operations had once shown promise, nearly 70 percent of SCI’s revenue was generated by operations in the United States and Canada. The company decided to divest many of its offshore businesses, in addition to many North American funeral homes and cemeteries. The UK arm now operates as Dignity PLC.

“I don’t want to go on the cart!” How we treat our dying; how we treat ourselves.

Monty Python presents an interesting scenario at a time when Jessica Mitford was enjoying the fruits of her muckraking book, “American Way of Death,” (1963), and the funeral home chains and funeral service factory corporations were reaching their peak of exploitation when Mitford’s “American Way of Death Revisited” was poshumously published (1998). Monty Python had it right. But we all laughed our way straight to hell.

J.B. Huber MD: “Psychology of Grave Epidemics”
(Med. Times, 1911)

Moving from a 1975 comedy spoof we can cite a remarkable article that appeared in the December 1911 journal, Medical Times, by John B. Huber MD. Dr Huber writes about the great Manchurian Plague (1910-1900), and compares it to the Black Plague (1347-1351). I’d like to quote some passages from that 1911 medical journal article. See if you can draw any parallels with our 21st century society.

Yet business was conducted as ordinarily—by those still alive; and the stroller “viewing the manners of the town,” would hardly realize from the superficial aspect of things, that a dreadful scourge was gradually but surely destroying its people. Yet the plague had, from November last up to this New Year’s Day, done for one-fourth of the twenty thousand inhabitants of that community; and it was then expected that more than half the remainder would be doomed before the plague would expend its energies.

On this festive New Year’s Day in that Manchurian town, the mounted policeman’s horse had its tail brightly decorated with green and red streamers; a shop keeper burst merrily out upon a group in the street, scaring them with a bunch of firecrackers which he flung up into the air. A green house was decorated with bright red, gilt lettered posters, festive banners and green paper flags, all by way of celebration. Next door the yellow poster of the Sanitary Bureau was in evidence, sealing up that house, and marking it unclean; “eight dead, two dying,” are the tally with which it began the New Year. (Huber p. 353)

Sounds like our modern lifestyle: death looms around us but we just continue partying, ignoring it, until we have to go down that dark alley and have no choice but to confront the darkness, the gloom. Manchuria in the early 20th century doesn’t seem much different from Troy or Albany in the early 21st century.

“Eight dead, two dying.” Sound’s like Monty Python’s Cart Driver, “They’ve lost nine today.” Or like the handoff report in an ICU. Whether you’re tallying plague victims or scheduling body collections, or handing off your charges to the next shift, the language used tells it all: We’ve all become mere garbage bags laying about until we get collected, transported, disposed of. Don’t you think there should be more to the final chapter of a life lived, and the received legacy?

Plague: carting the dead, by Moynet A cart with the dead.

“The carters that loaded the dead on the wagons and took them away would not walk, but sat companionably beside the corpses.” (Huber p. 353)

And so do we in the 21st century. The 21st century carters load up the dead and take them away; the bereft sit complacently beside the corpses. One would hope that we have advanced a bit farther along than our ancestors, that we would observe the traditions handed down to us, perform the grief and mourning rituals so important to psychospiritual healing. Some of us do. Most haven’t a clue, and rely on the bean counters to guide them.

Direct Burial: Coffinless in Pits

“Nine hundred were buried coffinless in pits; above two thousand frozen corpses, in a most desolate stillness, awaited burial near the town, in a heap a quarter-mile long. Some coffins were in evidence, standing upright, without covers, the bodies erect in them; here an arm stuck upright out of its receptacle; there a naked leg protruded. Near the pile of which he was soon to become a member, was seen an outcast kneeling, worshipping, half falling in his weakness, as he bowed his head and rose again, before the grave of an ancestor.´ (Huber p. 353)

On the one hand we get a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes at one of the funeral home chains or factory-funeral homes as described by a young licensed funeral director now employed by Newcomer Funerals and Cremations. On the other hand, we are presented with a feeble suffering wretch who, despite his own suffering, has not forgotten his obligations in continuing his bonds with the dead, one of whom he shall soon be. It’s a rich, telling image; in a sense very real but very metaphorical. Once you create that image in your mind, you’ll not soon forget it.

“[T]he plague was coming to its most dreadful stage, for it was now destroying the family affections…Thus, most gruesomely, does the twentieth century repeat the fourteenth.” (Huber p. 354)

While Dr Huber is describing a real epidemic, the Manchurian Plague of 1910-11, and describes the Black Death of the 14th century that swept away a substantial part of medieval Europe’s population, we are faced with a more insidious plague that is robbing us of our core values to family and kin, both living and dead. Huber, a medical man, calls this the “most dreadful stage” because it was destroying the core of the culture, the bonds of family. I’d guess he’d probably go further to say that the 21st century repeats both the 14th and the 20th, but that our plague is materialist consumerism promoted by greed and the catastrophe of so-called individual choice.

“Next to the fear of death was the fear of desertion.” (Huber p. 354)

Early 20th century China had very strong family ties, ties of responsibility, filial piety. This sense of duty was the basis of the veneration of ancestors, a form of continuing bond with the dead, similar to the West’s veneration of its sacred dead, the saints. Huber is describing a fear of abandonment, of “desertion” to be on a par with the fear of death. In clinical practice, whether in the nursing home or the hospital setting, or hospice, we find persons who are ready to confront death but fear doing it alone; they have a fear of desertion. We might extend that fear of desertion to the bereaved, as well, but their desertion is far more subtle than committing the dying to some remote corner of the medical ICU or to a hospice facility. The bereaved are not only saddled with their loss but also with the daunting confrontation with the corporate funeral director with his endless list of goods and services with their respective prices. All is done with the sensitivity of an embalming trocar. What ever happened to the compassionate family funeral home and its director, frequently assisted by his family.

Black-Death-Plague-Doctor-Clothing

“Who, then, would be so foolhardy as to throw good life after bad, by nursing a dying friend, when the Black Death lay per chance in his last sign, in the farewell pressure of his hand. So the nearest and dearest ties were dissolved, the calls of kindred and humanity neglected; the sick left to die and to be carted to the grave by hirelings…” (Huber p. 354)

Indeed, who today would be so traditional as to give up his or her self-time to care for a dying relative or friend, especially one who is in the disturbing phases of life’s end. Most persons are ambivalent about the whole process: On the one hand they look to the death as something unbearable in its finality; on the other hand they just want to get it over with. The death occurs and the bereaved are fed the 20th century psychological pablum that their connection with the dead person has ended, that they have to get on with a productive life. That was Freud’s teaching: You had to cut your ties with the dead. Quite the opposite of that in the East or in traditional societies, and quite a contrast to what we now teach in the 21st century. We now teach continuing bonds with the dead, a transcendence phenomenon, meaning-making, that the living’s relationship with the deceased is not only normal and healthy, it’s encouraged! We do it in the rituals of the support group or in ways like the AIDS quilt. We may do it differently than the poor wretch venerating his ancestors described by Huber but we nonetheless do it. We do it because it’s the human thing we do. But it’s also so very inconvenient for the chains and the corporations; they don’t encourage humanity, they encourage production and consumerism. Take three days and get over your grief. Back to work with you. See you on Thursday.

“Boccaccio attests vividly how the human organism in all its phases—physical, spiritual, moral, intellectual—deteriorated in stamina and in co-ordination. Compassion, courage and the nobler feelings were found in but few; whilst cowardice, selfishness and ill-will, with the baser passions in their train asserted their supremacy. In place of virtue, which had been driven from the earth, wickedness everywhere reared its rebellious standard and succeeding generations were consigned to her baneful tyranny.” (Huber p. 354)

Boccaccio here is describing the pitiful demise of humanity in the Middle Ages. We could describe the present state of affairs without changing a word, couldn’t we? Take a moment and go to the Newcomer Funeral Service Group or their Albany/Latham websites for Newcomer Funerals and Cremations and read their ridiculous claims of what they offer the bereaved. Go to the Service Corporation International site and read about their “compassion”, their caring, their sensitivity to the needs of the bereaved. That’s worse than General Motors telling you they care about your lower back pain. Yet how many consumers actually swallow that sordid brew. These factory-funeral corporations aren’t making billions because no one’s falling for the marketing hype, the sales pitches pressuring the bereaved in their most difficult moments to sign and buy. We say look at the lawsuits and how much they’re paying out for failing the bereaved, for causing the bereaved more suffering than they had ever bargained for.

“[t]he Black Death “seemed to arise the worst passions of the human heart, and to dull the spiritual sense of the soul.” Who would think, declared Papon, “that in the midst of horrors so suitable (it would seem) for extinguishing the passions, there were two—libertinism and greed—which should be carried to so high a degree!” (Huber p. 354)

Indeed! Who ever thought that liberties, individualism, choice could lead to the present situation we find ourselves in. How is it that human beings in their worst possible moments should be exposed to the worst possible motivations and motives of modern mankind: libertarianism and greed. Those very libertarians preaching choice and liberty are deeply rooted in the horrible hypocrisy that such choice and liberty give life to. The plague that is upon us now in the 21st century is not a plague that is carried by fleas, and it’s not a plague that kills in five days. Our 21st century plague is called materialist consumerism, market economy, capitalism and it’s carried by fellow human beings, and it kills insidiously but totally in mind, body and spirit. There’s no way to discern with any certainty the extent of the infection but one thing is certain, there’s no effective vaccine, and most people would not want to undergo the cure.

One woman was married five times in one day—four of the bridegrooms having been buriers of the dead, dressed in the clothes they had stripped from the bodies of the deceased.” (Huber p. 354)

Huber describes the total depravity of the people who now have lost all sense of morality and values, and who now in a devil-may-care attitude of let’s be merry because we’re dead anyway. He describes a woman who marries five men in succession who are carried away just as quickly. She describes those who profit from the belongings and property of the dead, whom they have stripped. For all of Jessica Mitford’s muckraking, she would have had a picnic with this line, somehow drawing a connection between these “buriers of the dead” and those “dressed in clothes they had stripped from the bodies of the deceased.”

Like horrors disgraced many other communities. He: is furnished another example—such as are so deplorably frequent in history of how fanatical frenzy, associated with hatred and the play of the baser passions, will work powerfully upon nations and peoples to the utter exclusion of the restraints of reason, of law, or of any other wholesome factor. And the greater part of those who, by their education and rank, might have been assumed to raise the deterrent voice of reason, themselves led on the savage mob to murder and to plunder the Jews. (Huber p. 355)

Throughout history, Satan has always been the “other”; humankind has never really been able to see its true self, it’s never been able to accept its shadow side. Huber is describing the desperate search for a cause of the plague and, then as now, hatred and baser passions take control, and the necessary scapegoat is found. Whatever doesn’t support the new agenda has to be demonized and sent packing. The dead are not producers, the bereaved are not efficient workers. The dead are distracting the living from their production or consumption. Make the dead and dying disappear, marginalize the traditions, deny grief, exploit the bereaved, then send them back to work. The voice of reason is muted. Our institutions teaching and training the healthcare and deathcare professionals teach technology and business law, not ethics and humanities. The mortuary science programs wouldn’t want to whisper a word against the multinational funeral chains and factory funeral homes, after all they pay the bills and hire the graduates. Why cut your own throat? Why bite the hands that pad your pockets? Of course they won’t hire anyone teaching real deathcare, psychospiritual support, tradition, ritual, healing. The bereaved are, after all, consumers. And you wouldn’t want to keep them from their producing activity for any longer than necessary. Besides, there’s always another body and we have to keep turning over the visitation rooms and chapel. Headquarters wants to see numbers, you know.

That the emotions played a part regarding the plague was observed by many. Those who were terrified were more prone to contract the disease. Those who feared not and were of a cheerful, equable mind were, to the extent at least of that benign influence upon the organism, the more likely to escape. Boccaccio, in writing the Decameron, recognized that pleasant thoughts were the best preventive….Those who despaired threw away their one chance of life; those of sanguine temperament resisted well. (Huber p. 355)

It’s really ironic that I should close with this passage from Huber’s article. Not really. What Huber is saying here is that if you despair you’re lost already. If you become complacent, you’re dead in the water. Those who step up, ask the questions like: Are you part of a funeral home chain? Are you owned by a funeral service corporation? Are you still family owned? will likely come out on top. It’s not necessarily the pleasant thoughts that get you through any plague, it’s the positive, affirmative thoughts that will prevent you from being taken for a ride. It’s really very true what Huber and Boccaccio are preaching here: You have to have the courage to ask the questions, to look beyond the bells and whistles, to see through the smoke screens, and to assert what you feel you need in your bereavement, not what’s on the corporate menu. The more you do your own thinking and planning the more likely you’ll escape the snares set by the corporate funeral directors. The article may have been written in 1911, over a hundred years ago, but it still has substantial relevance today. I hope to have shown that in my analysis.

Thus are all phases of individual existence mutually and inextricably interrelated: extensive and prolonged deterioration in any one aspect is bound in time to affect perniciously the others in time; such hideous psychic phenomena as are here stated do not obtain in the beginning of any such calamity as the Black Death. But it is the circumstance (and a most pathetic one) that the exercise of the heroic virtues for any lengthy period is contingent upon the maintenance of normal living conditions in general; otherwise the psychic stamina deteriorates, manners become dissolute, morals depraved and consciences debased. (Huber p. 355)

What Dr Huber is saying in this paragraph is that life events are intimately interrelated — I understand these life events to be the basis of our traditions and rituals — and that if we allow any of those events to be exploited or to lapse into irrelevance, all others will suffer as the result. Huber’s phrase “heroic virtues” equates with human values and ethical conduct, which logically rely on “normal” living in our society. When “psychic stamina deteriorates” we have a disturbance in coping and resilience, we forget the ritual and become lost, we forget our obligations, and our whole mindset, our worldview, deteriorates. This, in the 21st century, is what happens when we fall victim to the materialist consumerism of our age and become slave consumers of the corporations and their perverse messages.

And so you have it: From none other than Monty Python’s 1975 depiction of the Black Death, and from a physician writing in 1911 about the pneumonic plague in Manchuria, China, do we have the evidence that really nothing has changed; we have learned nothing. What more can one say?

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Casting A Glance Over Our Recent Articles We Have to Wonder…

Burning Questions for Residents

Ravena: Change is in the Air

Freshness in the Air

The air is getting fresher and fresher in Ravena. You can almost breathe without Ravena Mayor Bruno or Nancy Warner breathing down your back. Any ideas why that is, Ravena residents? Ravena is facing an historic election, one that, according to our polls and the word on the street, is going to turn the village right around: The incumbent, very unpopular, abysmally low in the polls John Bruno is on the road to a well-earned boot-in-the-ass, and a popular local figure, Bill “Moose” Misuraca, local tavern owner and community leader, is wearing the boot. The same is true for the guys competing for the 2 Ravena trustee seats on the Village Council. Here are the figures as of February 25, 2014:

According to these figures, it doesn’t look good for Bruno, Persico and Case. With those figures, you even wonder why they’re bothering and don’t just throw in the towel, instead of suffering extreme embarrassment at the polls. But they’ve never shown any good sense; why would they start now?

Coeymans: The World’s Dumping Ground

We’re having some trouble with figuring out just where Coeymans wants to be in the next ten years or so. We’re having difficulty understanding whether, what, or even if Coeymans town hall has vision or is still blind as a bat and being led around by the nose by self-serving insiders and governed by backroom deals. Here’s why:

When Arby’s needed a slapstick comedy town to rename itself—that is, prostitute itself for a sandwich and be the world’s fool—Coeyman’s stood tall screaming “We’ll do it!” And they did it: they renamed the Town of Coeymans “Reubenville” for an entire month and in return got a box of sandwich coupons. What Tom Dolanand the rest of the cockroaches in Town Hall, like Tom Dolan, didn’t steal, Coeymans residents lined up like round rodents to claim what was left. When poorTown Clerk Diane Millious was asked who was accounting for the coupons (each was worth about $6) the otherwise cool and collected clerk just shook her head and said, “Nobody. They just come and take what they want.” [paraphrased]

When Albany wants a dump: They go to Coeymans. When TCI want to relocate their poison plant (just PCBs): They go to Coeymans. When someone wants to create a port complex or build a bridge: The build a high dirt wall to hide the Hudson River (and what’s going on at their port) from our view (Yes, Mabel! Some say it was an NSA requirement to have the wall to prevent terrorism but it still hides the River and, really, how many terrorists do you think it will stop?), or they tear up our roads and choke us with dust, or they simply tear up the environment to build a bridge and possibly compromise a protected waterway. (And, YES! Mabel, they did put in a Gazebo so you can sit and watch the river! Thank you!) But the slogan is: “Just come to Coeymans and we’ll roll over for you!”

We know who’s getting paid off for all of this and who’s getting really rich BUT how many jobs did they create?

And what about local media? The Albany Times Useless and News 10, 13, and 6 have a heyday trashing everything and everyone in the Coeymans community and Coeymans just…rolls over. Just think about the misleading and devastating reporting that went on News 10 ABC recently about a new business in Glenmont! (see our article: Thank You! All You Can Eat Buffet Discount). Isn’t Albany, Ravena-Coeymans, the Capital Region, New York State, the Country depressed enough? Do we need local “news” media’s help in killing new business and jobs in the area? Let’s all thank Channel 10 “news” and the Albany Times Union for plunging a knife deep into our backs!

Talking about trash and dumping, and rolling over to be screwed: We still have the Coeymans Police Department, too. But rumor is that’s not for long.

But let’s ask these questions: Have any ot these carpetbaggers done anything for the residents of Coeymans besides unload on them and make fools of them?

Town Government and School Governance

We’ve recently posted a number of articles discussing the goings on in our town halls in Coeymans and in New Baltimore. One of our articles relates again to the Coeymans police departmentand the retirement of one of its employees, Gerald “Dirty Hands Jerry” Deluca, who claims to have 32 years on the Coeymans police force (Ravena News Herald picked up on this in and article by Bryan Rowzee. See our revealing article at: Making Shite Shine). We pointed out some very glaring questions about Deluca’s claims and demanded an investigation. Do you think that’s going to happen? Do you think the Town of Coeymans board is going to pass a resolution to investigate Deluca’s claims and publish the results for all to see?

Do you think for a moment that the Town of Coeymans has ordered an investigation or brought in outside authorities to investigate the many claims of obstruction of justice, misprision of felony, harassment, misuse of public office, etc.? Nothing has been done but to shake the criminals’ hands and give them fat pensions! This is NOT going away, Coeymans, so you’d better do something about it.

The recent stupid comments made by the Coeymans official and picked up by the Albany Times Unioncan’t be overlooked and have not been overlooked by us or our readers. In fact, we won’t even comment but will quote one of our readers who left a comment on the issue:

And our schools? More than $42 million budget. That’s more than the entire budget of the town of Coeymans and the Town of New Baltimore combined! And for what? The Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk central school district board of education is owned by the teachers and the teachers union, NYSUT. The budget is getting more and more bloated at the expense of a dwindling tax base in the RCS school district but the quality of education as evidenced in graduation rates and recent reports on the quality of education in the schools is dropping: RCS property owners are being clobbered with every higher taxes, the non-property owners are reaping the benefits, and we are still at the bottom of the list as far as quality of education goes.

But where there’s that much money available you can bet there’s corruption! But the teachers are getting pretty hefty salaries and their benefits and fringes are certainly not going down! They demand MORE and deliver LESS! Why do RCS CSD residents stand for that? Better question: Why do RCS school district property owners and taxpayers stand for that? Any good answers?

Plenty of money and no transparency, no accountability. That spells abuse of public trust, corruption, and crime!

Speaking of abuse of public trust, corruption and crime—and NO! we’re not back on the Village of Ravena’s case nor are we launching another exposé on the Coeymans p.d. or Cathy Delucaand her Ravena playpen, the failing money pit a.k.a. the Ravena Health and Fitness Center—we’re looking at how tax assessments are done in Coeymans but will let one of our readers pour the salt into your wounds on this one, Coeymans (see below in comments).

New Baltimore Town Clerk’s Office HoursBoard Wants Change

We’re also looking at the situation of the New Baltimore Town Clerk who doesn’t think she needs to keep regular office hours. We’ve run a story on New Baltimore Town Clerk, Janet Brooks (click here: “If you want me to do my job, you’ll have to pay me more…”), who staunchly opposed the New Baltimore Town board’s attempt to establish regular hours for the Town Clerk’s office. We have also learned that in addition to her very generous salary of about $29,000/year PLUS benefits (healthcare etc.) PLUS state pension, she tends to keep very unusual hours. In fact, a reliable report alleges that in January 2014 she put in all of 8 days! And it appears that previous democrat administrations (David Lewis/Diane Lewis, O’Rorke) never bothered to establish office hours nor to publish even whether the official position of Town Clerk is full- or part-time. Does that really surprise you?

Well, the newly elected New Baltimore town board has uncovered mountains of irregularities in New Baltimore town government and is taken decisive steps to kill the corruption and criminality that has been going on there.

Here’s a comparison for you, New Baltimore residents: The Town of Coeymans is has about twice the population of New Baltimore and the Coeymans town clerk does about twice the number of things the New Baltimore town clerk does. The Coeymans town clerk is full-time PLUS. The Coeymans town clerk receives about $42,000 a year in salary as full-time clerk. The New Baltimore town clerk, Janet Brooks, receives more than $30,000 (total estimate for 2014) but appears to think her job is part-time. Can anyone in New Baltimore explain this? How long has this been going on?

From where we are standing this looks like abuse of public trust, misuse of public office, corruption, and even embezzlement of public funds by stealing salary and benefits! Has anyone tried this in their jobs? Does it work as well for you as it apparently works for Ms Brooks?

The newly-elected New Baltimore supervisor and his team are working hard to uncover the dirt that’s been swept under the carpets, to get the skeletons out of the closets in New Baltimore town hall, to put things in some order. But they’re getting a lot of opposition from Ms Brooks, her ally New Baltimore Dem Committee chair Dianne Lewis (wife of former supervisor David Lewis), and sock puppet town board members Lisa Benway and Christopher “Chris” Norris, who apparently have a lot to hide. Denis Jordan, whose wife is deputy clerk to Janet Brooks and now New Baltimore tax collector, is tripping over himself on a day-to-day basis.

It’s a mess but given time and energy, newly elected New Baltimore supervisor Nick Dellisanti and his able team of Jeff Ruso and Sally vanEtten, with the support of honest New Baltimore residents, will eventually clean things up and maybe send a couple of criminals down the river.

That all said, now is a time to put basic American values and solid tradition back in our town halls, people. We’ve gotten very lax in our churches and town halls, in our politics and our spirituality. We need to rediscover our values and stop this stupidity we call political correctness and all of the dehumanizing secularity we wallow in because we are so damned confused the only place to go is back into our shell and make-believe there’s nothing out there but US!

Local media has turned into propaganda mills, schools are crap, kids brains are turning to mush and getting sucked into their electronic toys, mummy mayors and witches on sticks close our youth centers but reward insiders with fitness centers, property owners are being sucked dry by incompetent vampire school systems, police keep everyone properly intimidated and provide the necessary harassment and retaliation, churches are empty or populated by ministers who preach political agendas and hypocrites reading the Scriptures, town halls are meeting places for crooks and backroom deals, roads are full of potholes, Main Street is a ghost town, they’re turning our meadows and forests into transfer stations or dumps, and they’re building walls to hide our river. That’s America in our little community. Does it get any worse?

And You Wonder Why Lady Liberty is Weeping?Or is she covering her eyes because she can’t bear to witness what’s going on?The Editor

“Qui tacet consentire videtur ubi loqui debuit ac potuit.”“Silence is admission when the accused ought to have spoken and was able to.”

Special Notice: We make every effort to be truthful, complete, fair, and balanced on this blog; therefore, if you see anything that you know to be false or incorrect, or if you have additional information to clarify any issue, please let us know by e-mailing your information or by leaving a comment. It’s very important to us that we don’t fall into the same category as those whom this blog is intended to expose. Thank you very much in advance for your coöperation and assistance.
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Anxiety Mongers and Fear Specialists Have Finally Descended on The Community!

The Feeling You Got Listening toJohn AnthonySustainable Freedom Lab

We The People Presented So-Called Agenda 21 “Expert” John Anthony (Sustainable Freedom Lab) to Blather On for More than One-and-One-Half Hours of Brainwashing (Most Were brain-dead After the First 20 or So Minutes of Anthony’s Diatribe) of A Near-Full House of Locals on Anthony’s Own “Be Suspicious Agenda”

John Anthony of SFLThe only one we know of who can talk longer than Obama and actually make less sense!

Even more damning than a damned boring exposure to propagandist blatheris the slap in the face at the end, when there is no time allocated for comments or for questions and answers. What were the organizers afraid of? Yeah, sure, they might have had to put facts where their cake holes were. It’s much safer to spew your venom and then beat it before anyone comes up with a real question requiring real facts. But I blame the organizers of this despicable event; they could have done better and could have presented a fairer and more balanced discussion of both sides of the Agenda 21topic as a moderated panel discussion. It would have provided insights into both sides of the proposal and would have allowed more information exchange.

So, dear readers, the downside of the experience was the whole experience. The upside was that there was no charge to attend (but there was a collection dish in the middle of tables) and there was a cash bar (which eased the overall pain a bit). You can now read our complete report on the rantings of a very confused toxic dwarf from New Jersey. You can also review the recording we made of the dog-and-pony-act (which we’ve made available at the end of this article so you can decide for yourself whether the guy is a prophet or a lunatic; our money is on the lunatic part). If you’re one of the unfortunates who sat through the angry dwarf’s gleeful moment of self-gratification before an almost live audience, tossing books and vomiting random misinformation, you may benefit from our commentary. (If you click the Follow Me button at the top right of this page you can receive an automatic e-mail notification when our comments are published.)

John Anthony, a New Jersey businessman-turned-anxiety-monger, was invited by the organization calling itself We the People, to present his rather confused views about an action plan called Agenda 21. First of all, here are the organizations who put on the presentation at a local restaurant in Coxsackie:

We the People describes(Tom DeWeese) itself as

“Citizens dedicated to preserving a Constitutional Republic ruled by law and the concept that sovereignty resides in We The People.” [Source: We The People site at http://wethepeopleusa.ning.com/ last visited on February 17, 2013]

When I see expressions like “ruled by law,” (I’d rather be ruled by justice, not “law”) “sovereignty resides in We the People,” (I’m not sure whether they mean that sovereignty resides in the group “We the People” or if We the People is referring to the opening lines of the Constitution. Whatever they mean, it’s unclear. Unclear pretty much sums up everything they have to say, too!). [Source: Sustainable Freedom Lab (SFL) site at http://sustainablefreedomlab.org/ last visited on February 17, 2013]

I also get a bit uneasy when I see Sustainable Freedom Lab(what’s the “Lab” in there for, anyway? Are we a bunch of lab rats being toyed with by these organizations?) using phrases like “changing the fight,” (What “fight”? I thought we were in this together, not opponents!?!), “turn the tables on officials, planners, federal agencies, and non-governmental organizations” (Who’s left, I wonder?), and the buzzy, prick-up-your-ears cliché, “infringe on your rights.” What rights? Do we have any left after Andrew Cuomo, Obama, the Supreme Court, and David Soares mangle and distort the Constitution, and purloin and give our rights to the corporations? What’s left? I have to ask you?

Mr Anthony Was Nothing Less than At Best A Crazed Preacher, More Sinister, though, A Propagandist.

Actually, this experience woke me up to what’s out there and what the real agenda has been and continues to be: Mr Anthony, despite what he preaches, and preach he certainly does, is nothing less than a propagandistwho is promoting the despicable message of anxiety, fear, and mistrust that has been plaguing the ignorant and the misguided of this country for years. Mr Anthony is nothing less than one of those crazed fire-and-brimstone preachers of satan, hell and damnation we cringe from when we see them on the idiot box or in those old films. But he’s continuing what was started after 911 and in the so-called Patriot Act: he’s keeping everybody paralyzed in a state of high anxiety and fear.

Mr Anthony’s talk, and man can he t-a-l-k — he went on for more than 90 minutes, starting more than a half-hour late — foaming at the mouth in an avalanche of doctored or dubious factoids and figures, waving several thick books with long titles, spewing cryptic abbreviations and acronyms, waving maps no one could clearly identify, running off bulleted lists and quotes on a projection screen, all doom and gloom, nothing substantial, nothing to educate or illuminate, but everything presented to obfuscate, to blur, to confuse. Do we really need our local political leaders to expose us to that sort of shite?

The More He Ranted, the More the Real John Anthony Came Through.

As Anthony ranted on and on about this statistic and that statistic, his true person started to come through. This man who was touted as an “expert,” who first introduced himself to the audience as a “businessman” and midway through the talk morphed into a “historian,” didn’t know shit from Shinola, and was hell bent to spread his ignorance to the some 100 lemmings assembled in the room and mostly seniors, farmers, a smattering of local politicos, and a handful of 30-40-somethings who liked talking about not turning in their guns. But none of them appeared to be awake, much less following the unintelligible brayings of a fanatic, anti-government jackass!

John Anthony Went from Passionate Preacher, to Poking Propagandist, to Braying Jackass Before Our Eyes.(Well, actually, it took all of 90 minutes to happen.)

Of course the local media was there, if you can call the Hudson Catskill Newspapers, the “media.” In fact, just hours after the fanatic diatribe, Kyle Adamsof the Catskill Daily Mail rushed to post his take on the event. Adams makes a feeble attempt to make best use of his ignorance, to make sense out of what was going on in the room but fails miserably (as most of the so-called journalists at the Hudson Catskill Newspaperstend to do. They’re such creatures of habit. So eager to please their keepers.) Far be it from us to make a statement without allowing our readers to decide for themselves. Heres a link to the Adams item that was published on the Catskill Daily Mail online edition: Coxsackie forum warns against dangers of sustainable development.

And, by the way, Kyle Adams, you are grossly misleading when you write, “State Assemblyman Peter Lopez, R-Schoharie, who also attended to learn more about Agenda 21.” Peter Lopezshowed up about 10 minutes before the presentation mercifully ended. (I know because I was sitting by the door when he arrived and his cell phone promptly made a disturbance!) Mr Lopez, therefore, had no opportunity to either know what Mr Anthony was ranting about at all. Even if Lopez had shown up at the beginning of the presentation he wouldn’t have learned very much about Agenda 21, anyway. But Mr Lopez showed up at the end of the presentation, he did not “attend” as you incorrectly report, Mr Adams.

Now for the simple truth. No waving thick books in the air. No obscure statitisics. No doom and gloom. No propaganda. Just the plain, honest truth, something Mr John Anthonywas unable to deliver at the so-called “forum”. (We’re not going to go into the substance of Agenda 21. Those of you who are interested in the range of opinions can find something to your liking by simply Googling “Agenda 21.” There’s something for everyone but read it with an open mind, please.)

Mr Anthony waved a lot of books around and spewed a lot of factoidsin those agonizing 90 minutes. But the impression he made was that he was not being truthful. I say this because during his rant he clearly was preaching against “officials, planners, federal agencies and non-governmental organizations” as we can read in the description of his organization, Sustainable Freedom Lab, but he was giving only his ignorant interpretation. In fact, when I confronted him with a question about one of the books he suggested the audience download and read (it was a free publication of reports about Sustainable Development, Our Common Future), Mr Anthony responded that he was “not for or against anything, he was not supporting or opposing anything.” That’s clearly not the message he sent when delivering his rant (I’m providing a link to the entire rant, which I taped, at the end of this article). In fact, he failed to deliver the truth, a definition of Sustainable Development, taken directly from the very book he was flashing throughout the talk, Our Common Future, and invited those present to download and read. That definition contradicted just about everything Mr Anthony was preaching that afternoon:

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:

the concept ofneeds, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and

the idea oflimitationsimposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.”

That’s an important definition if we are to discuss sustainable development in any way whatsoever. In fact, all definitions of sustainable development ask us to we see the world as a system—a system that connects space, and a system that connects time.

Who today can avoid acknowledging that our entire existence depends on our accepting that everything in the world is interconnected and in a delicate balance. When you envision the world as a system whose effects move over space, you grow to understand that air pollution from North America affects air quality in Asia and vice versa, and that pesticides sprayed in Argentina could harm fish stocks off the coast of New England!

And when you think of the world as a system over time, you start to realize that the decisions our grandparents made about how to farm or otherwise develop the land continue to affect our land use or abuse today; and the economic policies we endorse today will have an impact on economic policies when our children are adults. Just think for a moment about the effects of deforestationand desertificationand their negative influence on climate and weather! Depleting the Amazonian rain forest and clearing forests in India is making a mess out of our weather patterns!

We also understand that quality of life is a system, too. It’s good to be physically healthy, but what if you are poor and don’t have access to education? It’s good to have a secure income, but what if the air in your part of the world is unclean? And it’s good to have freedom of religious expression, but what if you can’t feed your family?

The concept of sustainable development is rooted in this sort of systems thinking. It helps us understand ourselves and our world. The problems we face are complex and serious—and we can’t address them in the same way we created them. But we can address them. But Mr John Anthonydoesn’t provide solutions. The fact that he got to say what he wanted to say over those agonizing 90 minutes but did not end with a comment period or an opportunity to ask questions was a sure sign that his was a hit-and-run ambush act! He did nothing to simplify the situation nor to clarify it. Here’s what sustainable development looks like in a very simple, easy to understand form:

Here’s the real story behind sustainable development and it’s not a horror story about people losing their rights or private property being gobbled up by some monster from the cannibal culture of the United Nations or government agencies! Let’s stop with the idiotic witch hunts looking for monsters and start doing some soul-searching of our own. The real monsters are us, our perverse greedy, self-centered, insatiable individual avarice and gluttony.

And puhleezdon’t start with the idiotic speculationsthat the now 30-year old voluntary action plan is going to erase private property rights and implement a diabolical program of population control. If you really want to be scared shiteless just read some of the lunatic stuff on Catholic Answers,a site that describes its purpose as “to defend and explain the faith.” (Here’s the link: Agenda 21: United Nations’ erases private property for green-ism.) Seems there are more nuts out there than in a holiday fruitcake! Bless their poor demented souls!

If we want to survive in the terms of the definition of sustainable development taken from the book Our Common Future, we need to make it a firmly rooted, long-term reality by first working in community to create a truly sustainable economy. The fear and anxiety propagandists only offer one side of the coin, the tarnished side, and are always pointing to the “other” as the enemy. We, you and I, have to take responsibility.

All human, all economic activity is dependent on a healthy Nature, a healthy world!

No matter how you look at it our economy is based on nature. Yes, the Nature we’re constantly trying to destroy to satisfy our appetites for more, More, MORE. It’s time we took a step back and recognized that we are a part of the Nature we are destroying; that we are in an intimate relationship with Nature. The foundation of our survival is in the soil, water, air, and environmental concerns have to be first understood by US, and we then must inform our policy makers that we need to stop our suicidal policies. All human, all economic activity is dependent on a healthy Nature, a healthy world!

We are citizens of the universe, the world, the created order and we have really gone off the deep end; we need real ecological and economic conversation. The environmental problem is the direct consequence of our economic activity of our greed, of the corporations and short-term profits and short-term solutions. Those negative environmental consequences are long-term and must be first among our national and international priorities. The environmental question is not just an ethical and scientific problem, it’s a political and economic problem.

We need to place greater emphasis on renewable energy, fuels and cleaner technologies, for starters. We have to do a hell of a lot more to stop and reverse current trends in consumption and pollution. And where does that start? Not in the halls of Washington or the UN, not in the government agencies, not in non-governmental organization as Mr Anthony would have you believe. It starts in your own homes, in your kitchens, in your living rooms, in your town halls!

OK, if fossil fuels are going to be with us for “the foreseeable future” and if the governments are going to settle for “hybrid options in the energy mix”, then serious public investment in clean technology must accompany this pragmatism as an urgent part of national and international strategiesto diminish as fast as possible the impact of air and sea transport pollution and those sectors’ continued use of outdated technology. That’s what Agenda 21 is proposing. Not depriving anyone of life, liberty, happiness or private property. Agenda 21 is an action plan, a voluntary program, that will ensure life, liberty, happiness and private enjoyment of property for the present and for the future. But we didn’t hear that from Mr Anthony…he has his own agendas.

The principle of subsidiarity requires the participation of local communities in the decision-making process

We’ve all heard about the future fresh water crisis, and it’s real. Melting polar ice, crazy record droughts, freakish storms, unparalleled flooding, crops rotting, cattle dying, shortages, and the list can go on. Do you really doubt that it’s connected with our patterns of abuse of Nature and our patterns of consumption. Do you really doubt that we’re on a suicidal binge of waste and misuse? Think of a basic survival need, water: the fulfillment of water requirements is not the lack of sufficient water for human needs but that of the proper stewardship, care and administration of our water resources. We’ve all heard or read about the privatization of water resources, where corporations are buying up municipal water resources with a view of making a profit by selling the natural resource back to the people. This certainly highlights the problems of rogue corporations, wild-eyed greed, the need for ethical management of infrastructure, technology, and finances. Governance of water resources must be based on the implementation of the principle of responsibility shared at all levels, especially the local, right on through the regional, state, national and international level, with particular attention to the principle of subsidiarity, which requires the participation of local communities in the decision-making process.

Desertification and drought now affect more than one in six of the world’s population.

The UN designated 2006 as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification, and drew international attention to one of the most alarming processes of environmental degradation. Desertificationhas a strong negative influence not only on the environment but also in economic and social fields. Desertification and drought now affect more than one in six of the world’s population.

We should be well aware that too little of our own, personal, local effort has been made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology. Such an authentic human ecology will place the human person at the centre, not at the top, dear readers, of environmental concerns, while at the same time promoting an urgent sense of human responsibility for the Earth, be it at the level of the individual single household, local communities, states, commerce. Everything starts and ends with the individual person: YOU and I.

Good environmental policies are by extension good people policies too.

Back to water. Water. by 2025, a third of the world’s nations will have catastrophically low levels of water. Even today, 34,000 people die every day for lack of clean water: one and a half billion people do not have access to clean water, a figure which could rise to 3 billion by 2025. We, right here in town, experience water restrictions almost regularly so how can we continue ignoring our involvement in a global problem?

We need desperately to find a balance.We don’t need more anxiety preachers!

We can no longer go on pretending that our individual greed and that human activity has little or no negative impact on resources that are essential to our survival.

In terms of food security or ensuring that there’s enough feed our populations. Changing climactic conditions have had a devastating effect in this area. Newsweek recently published a feature article on foods that will disappear from our tables if we don’t take some concerted action to change our destructive habits. We can no longer pretend that human activity has little or no impact on these matters. (Anyone notice smaller food packaging, less content, higher prices? Less for more. Is that the UN conspiracy or the corporations at work?)

Energy is central to achieving sustainable development goals; improving access to reliable, affordable and environmentally friendly energy services is a major challenge to the eradication of poverty, the fostering of social justice, of ensuring enough for all. Nature, creation, the environment is not private property, it’s our common inheritance from the Divine. Get with the program, people! It starts with Genesis but not the corporations or the John Anthony interpretation of it. You are not at the top of creation, you are at most at the center of creation and by occupying that position, you have a very grave responsibility…and you’ve made a bloody mess of it.

Reliance in industry, transport, commerce and defence upon traditional combustion engines is already a century old

The transportation sector is another devilish problem we need to seriously and urgently deal with. Reliance in industry, transport, commerce and defence upon traditional combustion engines is already a century old. For several reasons, their replacement with clean, renewable alternatives is long overdue.

The Earth’s climate system has demonstrably changed on both global and regional scales since the pre-industrial era. The global warming trend and sea-level rise would continue for hundreds of years, due to the atmospheric lifetime of some greenhouse gases and the long timescales on which the deep ocean adjusts to climate change.

Who can seriously doubt or argue against the fact that the dovetailing of environmental and developmental concerns with commercial and industrial policymaking will surely lead to a safer, more prosperous future for all. But no nation can achieve this alone.

We need to start acting like mature citizens and stewards of creation and admit our part in the damage done and take responsibility for our part in healing it!

Apart from the myriad clichés, the single point that John Anthonymade and with which I must admit to agreeing with is this: We need to push our elected officials to work with our communities to ensure our survival.

Yes, dear readers, you need to stop wallowing in your own misery and anxiety and do something about it. You and I have the power to make these changes work. You and I have to demand these changes. You and I have to make these changes. You and I have to take urgent steps to make our elected officials know that we will no longer play the village idiots for the corporations or the special interests. We are the ones who are paying the price and the ultimate price will be our survival. We need to stop the shortsightedness and tell people like John Anthonywho want to force feed us with more anxiety and more negativity to Shut the hell up! We need to start acting like mature citizens and stewards of creation and admit our part in the damage done and take responsibility for our part in healing it! In otherwords, Grow up! Ante up! Or shut up!

Time to put our own SPIN on things!Time for us to take responsibility, to take control!

Mr Anthony had the audacity to call himself an historian. Purest rubbish! Mr Anthony proved his ignorance by making the statement that “social justice” or “social option” was coined about 40 years ago, about the time the notion of sustainable development was born. That’s simply not true! In fact, social justice is a prominent theme in the Gospels, in the Old Testament prophets. It was made part of the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Leo XIII’s peerless Encyclical, On the Condition of Workers, “On Capital and Labor,” and later in Pope Pius XI’s “On Reconstruction of the Social Order” (1931). The notion of social justice was further developed by great humanitarians like Dorothy Day, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and before them the Buddha and Christ! 800 years ago St Francis of Assisi was teaching social justice and most faith traditions continue some form of social justice and social options! Where have you been, Mr Anthony?!?

So, in conclusion, if you have 90 minutes on a Sunday and don’t know how to spend them, may I recommend that if you want to hear preaching, take those 90 minutes and spend them in Sunday worship. At least there you might pick up something from the more than 2000 years of wisdom that might constructively help you to cope with the anxiety people like John Anthonyand his ilk are foisting on an almost daily basis .

As promised, here is the link to the recording of the entire Anthony rant, if you’d like to listen or download it: John Anthony Rant, or right-click the link to download the audio file.

[Editor’s Note: If anyone who is reading this article would like to read a moral theologicaldiscussion of the Agenda 21 subject matter, just leave a comment and we’ll post the ethics and moral theological reasoningbehind Agenda 21. There is much to be said about humanity’s moral and natural right obligation to accept and implement the principles of Agenda 21, and why it would be “sin” not to do so.]

Special Notice: We make every effort to be truthful, complete, fair, and balanced on this blog; therefore, if you see anything that you know to be false or incorrect, or if you have additional information to clarify any issue, please let us know by e-mailing your information or by leaving a comment. It’s very important to us that we don’t fall into the same category as those whom this blog is intended to expose. Thank you very much in advance for your cooperation and assistance!

We Have Received Some Comments That Indicate To Us That There Is Some Confusion Regarding The Operator Of The RC Teen Activity Center And A Very Popular Teacher At The RCS Middle School.

While we have made it very clear that we are not bashing anyone and that we are simply asking important questions relating to the RC Teen Activity Center, some of our readers have risen to the occasion to defend their “Mr Fisher.” I was very curt and blunt with one commenter who seemed to have been confused and vigorously defended her “Mr Fisher.” I now understand her confusion and I’d like to conditionally apologize for the rough treatment s/he received at my hands.

To be clear: Mr Michael Fisher is the operator of the RC Teen Activity Center in Ravena. Mr William Fisheris a teacher at the RCS Middle School. On this blog we are discussing only the RC Teen Activity Centerand Mr Michael Fishernotthe RCS Middle School and Mr William Fisher.

Mr William Fisheris a very popular and loved teacher at the RCS Middle School and we have that on very reliable authority: some of his students and several parents. So, Mr William Fisherwe would like to congratulate you on a very special reputation you have obviously earned at the RCS Middle School. While there may have been some confusion in the names, what ultimately came out in all of this is your fine reputation! So we conditionally apologize to you for any anxiety we may have caused to you!

We do want to emphasize, too, that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that Mr Michael Fisherof the RC Teen Activity Centeris not attempting to do good for the community. We support all that is good in this community. Our points made on this blog critique only a number of concerns and inconsistencies that we have noted in the leadership and organization of the RC Teen Activity Center. The leadership and organization is not the product of a single person but is the result of many interrelated factors and interactions of a number of people and agencies. We do not want to make the impression that we are singling out Mr Michael Fisher as an individual nor do we want to distract from his basic intentions.

As always, we want to continue our policy of truth and correctness and we intend always to publicize and own up to any misunderstandings we may inadvertently have caused. That policy is what makes us credible and reliable.

We thank you for your trust and confidence, and your loyalty!

The Editor

Special Notice: We make every effort to be truthful, complete, fair, and balanced on this blog; therefore, if you see anything that you know to be false or incorrect, or if you have additional information to clarify any issue, please let us know by e-mailing your information or by leaving a comment. It’s very important to us that we don’t fall into the same category as those whom this blog is intended to expose. Thank you very much in advance for your cooperation and assistance!

“There is a time for everything…under the heavens a time to be silent and a time to speak.” (Ecc 3:1a,7b)

The Suffering in the World and the Heaviness of Grief Drag the Soul Down and Weight it With Despair…But It Is Better to Light A Single Candle than to Curse the Darkness Around Us.

All religious and spiritual traditions teach that man lives in horizontal time or chronos; the Divine time is vertical, kairos. In Divine time there is no past or future, it is all here and now. Unlike humankind, the Divine does not look to the past nor to the future, they are simply unnecessary because the Divine is perfect and that perfection embraces unchangingness and allknowingness. Perfection does not have to learn from the past nor hope for the future.

Rachel Weeps for All Her Children!

But we exist in a different dimension, if you will. We can either despair of the past or hope for the future; resent the past and despise the future; or as Ecclesiastes teaches, we can accept that the Divine plan provides for “a time for everything…a time to be born and a time to die..a time for scattering stones and a time to gather them…a time to embrace…a time to search…a time to mend…a time to be silent and a time to speak…a time to love…and a time for peace.”

The Divine plan is Perfection and Immutable. It keeps us on schedule and on plan always, whether we like it or not, and whether we understand it or not. The world is full of pain and suffering, most of it so far away from us that we almost take it for granted and go on with our own lives without considering that human beings and other creatures are suffering immensely but we don’t see their tears or hear their cries…so they’re easy to pass by and cast our eyes away.Until it strikes close to home.But the Divine plan includes us always and when Perfectionsees its creatures becoming callous to the lessons of suffering, Perfectionbrings it closer to home so that we, too, can face the challenge and become humbled by it. When we see suffering we can appreciate the wisdom of Ecclesiastes: There is a time to be born and the fact of being born brings with it the fact of death.

We are made of fragile materials and we break, sometimes very badly, and we die. It’s when we are humbled by challenge, moments in the Divine Plan that we are incapable of comprehending, that it becomes time to gather stones to rebuild, a time to embrace our universal humanity as the kin-dom of the Divine, a time to search for meaning in the challenge. But above all and essential to the purpose of the Divine Plan is that a time of challenge is a time for love, a time for God, because as John teaches “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love,” (1 Jn 4:8). Gathering together in love, we are in a time of mending, of healing; in that time of healing we find a time to be silent, present, and a time to speak. As stones gathered searching for meaning in the challenge, and embraced by the power of perfect love, we heal in silence and sometimes speak silently in prayer…we seek peace.

The events in the world that cause suffering and despair, confusion and anger, anxiety and hate are in our time, not Divine time, we can move into Divine time by staying in the moment, no past no future, for but a breath’s time and find peace in the moment we occupy now.

Let’s stop for a moment being stones scattered and be stones gathered, remembering in this moment the suffering around us. Let’s stop for a moment to heal, to love, to be silent. Let’s stop for a moment to be peaceful and to grant peace to all of Creation. It’s in the Divine Plan. Let’s stop for a moment and remember we are created in the image of a God who is Love.

Remembering in this Divine moment of love, healing, and peace, the suffering in the world of all Creation, and remembering the acute pain we now suffer with the events closer to us. In your own, personal way remember the suffering in New Town, Connecticut.

This Article is Different from Most You Will Read On This Blog. It’s Angry and It’s a Morality Lesson, Too!

When’s the Last Time You Looked at Yourself, Deeply?

WHY???

Morality and ethics are things we used to learn at home from grandparents and parents, on the street from public servant role models (police, firemen, etc.), at school, in church. Now we pack our grandparents off to the nursing home, our public servants are thugs, sluts and thieves and our teachers aren’t much better, and who, really, goes to church anymore and who can really say they know anything about their religion or denomination, too? We’re in a very pitiful state as far as our morality and character are concerned, and our ethics is even worse, and our culture toxic.

So the theme of this blog is a quote from a beloved teacher, model, human being, St. Francis of Assisi, who is said to have taught, “If you have people who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have people who will deal likewise with their fellow men.” (Patron Saint of Ecology, 1181-1226) If you think about that statement, it should switch on some lights…somewhere.

It’s very true, though, when you think about it. If you tend to treat things, animate or inanimate, sensate or insensate, traditions or customs, without respect, love, compassion, sensitivity you’re very likely to treat other people and other living things the same way. And you know what? Generally, that disrespect and lack of compassion is just how you feel about yourself, we are told. Low self-esteem, low self-respect is usually reflected outward onto others, the world, people, creatures of all types.

This weekend, I visited the Iroquois festival at the Iroquois Museum in Cobleskill. There I enoyed demonstrations of Native American survival techniques, examined artifacts, viewed artworks, and learned a lot about the culture of the Iroquois Confederacy a “republic” of six nations. The Iroquois call themselves the “Haudenosaunee“, which means “People of the Longhouse,” or more accurately, “They Are Building a Long House.” They were politically sophisticated and tolerant, had a highly developed culture and religious system. They were matriarchal, a woman was head of the clan and picked the chief, and they were matrilineal, you took your mothers clan name and belonged to her clan.

What’s a North American native culture to do with a 13th century Italian saint? Well, they both stressed oneness with nature and creation, respect of others, the necessity of a positive compassionate relationship with all of creation for survival. Something we have lost touch with today and are so much the poorer as human beings and as members of creation.

After that elevating exhilarating experience, I found myself traveling down Rt 9W, just a mile or so before the entrance to the NYS Thruway when I saw something that was simultaneously horrific, saddening, ugly, and overall upsetting. In fact, it pissed me off really badly; it made me very regretful of humanity with its many flaws! It was the very image of what human beings have become today, and I decided I would share the sight and my thoughts with you on this blog.

Was this YOU, or someone you know?It’s plain SICKO!

There they were, three beautiful animals, less than perhaps 50-100 feet from each other, along the roadside, DEAD! Not killed weeks or even days apart but merely hours, judging by the condition of the corpses. (The picture shows only one; the other two are just down the road where the cars are.) Now I’ve seen death in so many ways in my career and just wandering the world but sometimes the way it happens to be presented just hits you in a certain way. This was a revelation, a shocking revelation of what human beings have become: Humanity has become a cosmic-plague, a malignancyinjuring, maiming and killing creation. But we’re worse than a mindless virus, because we claim to have a spark of divinity, freedom of will, intelligence, gifts that should make us a force for good, not a dark cloud of evil.These creatures, all of them young and healthy before being killed, were killed by humans in their machines and apparently by humans who had not a whit of concern or sense of responsibility for their actions nor any sense of compassionor responsibility. Like so many of you out there.

Yes, you are a restless bunch. Can’t stand still for long, have to move, gotta rush to get nowhere, gotta have that new toy but can’t reason Why? The commercials tell us to rush, we need IT now! And you respond by rushing and buying it. How’s that make you feel? A bit depersonalized, taken advantage of? Less than the person you’d like to be. Does it make you feel angryto be abusedby businesses, industry, government, others? Are you angry? Are you taking it out on the world. I’d guess yes, from where I’m observing. And it’s happened to you so insidiously, that you haven’t even noticed, have you?

Now take a step back and look at yourself. Now look at your children, if you’ve taken the time to produce any, or ever had the notion of sharing your life with anyone but your iPhoneand your Twitter or FaceBook cyberfriends. Are you constantly checking whether someone wants to message you, needs you to exist? Have you tried leaving the cellphone or the iPhone home and taking a walk…alone? What do you see? Do you like it? (Probably not.)

You hide the elderly and deny the naturalness of aging, you hasten the dying process in the ill but deny death, enjoy wanton and unprotected lust and then spread disease or kill the unborn and then preach chastity (for a frank discussion of abortion and the culture of death see my article: OPINION: Abortion Issues), you hurry to get nowhere special and when you get there you can’t wait to get to the next stop, you do most of what you do not knowing (or caring) why we’re doing it and just do it to get it off the list, you rush through every minute of the day without appreciating it or being in the moment even once and then whine that the day’s gone by already (whose fault is that?), you complicate your life with concrete things and lose the connection with the mysteries of life and can’t even visualize much less think in terms of concepts or the abstract. You eat three times more than you should, weigh at least 25% more than you should, but then complain that portions are small and that you’re overweight and unhappy with your body image. And you’re angry, fuming. Anger is ugly and does ugly things!Worse still, you deny you’re angry!

One of the ugly things your anger causes you to do is harm the helpless and the innocent, including the weak, the poor, the elderly, the young, and you do it verbally, physically, socially, psychologicaly, because it makes you feel powerful, empowered. But you’re just a common bully. And that’s where my concern for the morality of these developments comes into the discussion. The more you do a behaviour, the more it becomes habit, the more habitual it becomes, the more it becomes your character; your inner voice, your conscience, is a product of all of that. Your good-bad, right-wrong decisions are your morality, and what you do, how you live is your ethics. You are how you live. Are you afraid yet? You should be.

Our entire culture has become toxic.

Back to the Iroquois and the once great Native Americans. Look at what the European-now-American culture has done to them and how we’ve accomplished it: Invasion, cheating and dishonesty, eradication by the use of superior weapons and technology, importation of disease, import of an alien culture that is incompatible with centuries of tradition, disrespect for the native culture, forcing alien forms of government on the people, robbing them of their culture, their ethnic pride, their values, and then abandoning them to decline, disease, social degradation, and ultimately disappearance. In other words, we strip them of their dignity just as we strip all of creation of its dignity. And we do this for the worst of reasons and for short-term satisfaction and gain, imposing permanent damage and destruction, and move on to the next victims. Just like locusts devouring one field after another; simply destruction to feed our own perverse drives. Nothing’s changed over the past 300 years; we’re still doing it in other parts of the world. Admit itl, fix it, stop denying it!

BEFORE

Look at that face! You buy stuffed toys for your children because it’s so, well, cute, actually beatiful. Then you load your bloated or emaciated body into your gas-guzzler and run down two or three of the real things! What does that tell you about you? The three dead young raccoons were symbolic of what you’ve become: insensitive, self-serving, unrepentent, uncaring, black holes sucking up everything, destroyingit and giving nothing in return. It’s sad, isn’t it?

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What really makes me kind of giddy in a sense is that most of you have no connection with anything really, you’ve created a world of dualities for yourself: you and everyone else, America and the rest of the world, the 1% and the 99%, the good people and the Jews and Muslims, the church-going Christian in church and the church-going Christian out of church. That’s just to name a few of the dualities you’ve set up to make yourself acceptable. You’re so one-dimensional you need to create dimensions outside of yourself. And still you pray, you attend worship, you read the bible, etc. and you learn nothing, your life is still…emptyness. You’ve become what you say you hate: hypocrites. Too bad!

People, there’s got to be an Aha! moment somewhere in all of this. That moment where you have that certain revelation, that conversion moment where you say to yourself, “What the f**k am I doing? Where the f**k am I? Where the f**k am I going?” Are you getting closer to climaxing in this orgiastic frenzy of, for lack of a better expression, sin against nature?

Take a moment and look in the mirror. What do you see? Now, peel away that surface and what’s under there? Can you really live with that? Do you want to continue living with that zombie under your skin?

The World Is Your Mirror.

Yes! The world is your mirror. It’s what you’ve become and what reflects back on you. You are individually and collectively responsible. We used to talk about duties and obligations but nobody liked that; those words sounded like someone else was pulling the strings and you were all simply being told by big brother what to do (it’s still happening but you’ve convinced yourself it’s not–still living the lie): Do this! Don’t do that! You must…! Now we talk about responsibility and following your conscience…what conscience? How responsible are you for what’s going on around you? If you feel you’re responsible have you done anything to correct the wrongs and the evil around you? Or are you irresponsible?

Stop Hurting US! Please!The Editor

Special Notice: We make every effort to be truthful, complete, fair, and balanced on this blog; therefore, if you see anything that you know to be false or incorrect, or if you have additional information to clarify any issue, please let us know by e-mailing your information or by leaving a comment. It’s very important to us that we don’t fall into the same category as those whom this blog is intended to expose. Thank you very much in advance for your cooperation and assistance!